thiago_simoes

I hope so too. I'm also happy that now every one of the six continents has a medal at the Winter Youth Olympics. I didn't think this would happen anytime soon, to be honest, but here it is!

I can't believe I've lived to see Colombia earning a medal at the Winter (Youth) Olympics while Canada hasn't earned one yet.

As I mentioned, I'm not aware of the scoring system but it's great that there's an electronic system where the technical points are displayed right after the skaters perform the skills. This would have been amazing in gymnastics, since it's actually pretty simple to keep track of what each gymnast is doing once you learn how to count twists and saltos properly. Gymnastics is amazing but FIG is really, really bad.

Men's artistic gymnastics is very fair overall. I can't even remember the last time I completely disagreed with a major medal result, but women's artistic gymnastics is a joke nowadays. Daiane dos Santos lost an Olympic medal on floor because she stepped out of bounds with one foot in 2004, but in 2019 Biles basically messed her routine with several steps out of bounds and uncontrolled landing, but still won gold comfortably. This would never have happened in men's artistic gymnastics. Uchimura had the best floor routine of the competition in 2016, but he stepped out of bounds and finished out of the podium. The women's technical committee in artistic gymnastics, led by Nellie Kim, is a complete disgrace. They just can't pull their heads out of their asses.

Even in rhythmic gymnastics things have changed substantially (Kapranova had big mistakes in 2008 and didn't get a medal), but I have to say I'm completely unaware of the rules of figure skating. It's a sport I find unbearably boring. The jumps all look the same, the long program is, well, too long to keep my interest and most of the performances are over the top and tacky.

Calendar of events:

Trump made me think the unthinkable: I'll side with Iran this time.

This looks a lot like galinha, hen in Portuguese, so it's a big no in Brazil.

Thank you. Gelukkig nieuwjaar.

I didn't even know about that. Thanks for teaching me something new.

Any reason for that?

It could be a loaned expression too. I know it's considered a Romance language, but many langues take loan words as if there's no tomorrow, like Japanese, for example: iyaringu (ear ring), aisukuriimu (ice cream), both from English; arubaito (arbeit) from German; pan (pão), sarada (salada), both from Portuguese; resutoran (restaurant) from French.

As a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, I can hardly understand anything Portuguese people say. Whenever there's someone speaking Portuguese on TV with the European Portuguese accent, the shows use captions for us to read. It's hilarious. Now, about Latin American Spanish, I believe it's fairly easy for us Brazilians to understand the accents from Peru and Mexico, and not too hard to understand accents from Paraguay and Bolivia. Argentinian Spanish in theory should not be too hard if they speak slowly and don't use slangs. Chilean Spanish is damn near impossible to understand, though, and Uruguayan Spanish is not so far behind.

How long does it usually take for IWF to announce a decision about doping cases? It was announced that Rustam Djangabaev was provisionally suspended in April, but it's December now and no further comments have been made. Given that they are still tangled in affairs from London 2012, I believe I should expect a final statement about Djangabaev by 2028.

So, why even let her compete? This is getting more and more ridiculous, and Brazil will end up only with Mayra Aguiar's medal at the WCh. I'm worried with our chances at the Olympics at this rate. Judo used to be a source of 3+ medals at the Olympics and now we'll be lucky to have even one.

I still don't understand how Rafaela Silva was stripped of the gold medal, but still was allowed to compete (and earned a team bronze medal) at the Judo World Championships.

The following results only take into account medals earned from 2010 to 2019, of course. 1) Arhur Zanetti (artistic gymnastics) - world champion, Olympic champion, Olympic silver medal, 2-time Pan American Games champion 2) Cesar Cielo (swimming) - 1 Olympic bronze medal, 9-time world champion, 4-time Pan American Games champion 3) Isaquias Queiroz (canoe sprint) - 3 Olympic medals, 6-time world champion, 3-time Pan American Games champion 4) Mayra Aguiar (judo) - 2 Olympic bronze medals, 2-time world champion, Pan American Games champion 5) Ana Marcela Cunha (open water swimming) - 5-time world champion, Pan American Games champion 6) Arthur Nory (artistic gymnastics) - world champion, Olympic bronze medalist, Pan American Games champion 7) Ana Sátila (canoe slalom) - world champion, 3-time junior world champion, 3-time Pan American Games champion 8) Hugo Calderano (table tennis) - bronze at the World Tour Grand Finals, bronze at the Youth Olympics, 4-time Pan American Games champion 9) Marcus D'Almeida (archery) - silver at the World Cup, silver at the Youth Olympics, cadet world champion, 2-time Pan American Games medalist 10) Fernando Reis (weightlifting) - bronze medal at the junior world championships, 3-time Pan American Games champion (and he could also inherit a bronze medal from the 2018 World Championships if Rustam Djangabaev really gets disqualified) And a special mention to Brazil's rhythmic gymnastics group (gymnasts vary) - bronze at the World Cup, 6-time Pan American Games champions

This is a very personal list and of course I'll only focus on artistic and rhythmic gymnastics. Male sportsperson of the year: Carlos Yulo Female sportsperson of the year: Brooklyn Moors Team of the year: Chinese Taipei men's artistic gymnastics team Junior sportsman of the year (under 20 years old at 1/1/2019): Edvins Rodevics Junior sportswoman of the year (under 20 years old at 1/1/2019): Lala Kramarenko Greatest moment of the year: Arthur Mariano winning the gold medal at the World Championships Biggest idiot of the year: Brazil missing an Olympic quota in women's artistic gymnastics by choosing Flávia Saraiva to perform on floor. Had she not performed, Thais Fidelis would have qualified for the Olympics as well as Flávia. As it is, only Flávia qualified. Granted, Flávia finished fourth on floor and was robbed of a medal, but anyway she walked home empty-handed and we missed an Olympic quota for Thais.

I only care about artistic and rhythmic gymnastics, so here we go. Overall I think this was a satisfactory year. It could have been a lot better for us Brazilians. In men's artistic gymnastics Brazil had a good year with 4 gold medals at the Pan American Games and 1 gold medal at the World Championships. The men also earned a team berth at the Olympics. The women didn't do so well despite being trained by very expensive coaches. At the Pan American Games they "only" earned three bronze medals, and at the World Championships the women earned one single quota (in theory they can earn 2 more, but 1 of these will be nearly impossible to get). Our rhythmic group got 1 gold medal at the Pan American Games, but they had a disappointing performance at the World Championships. It will be tough to earn Olympic qualification. The biggest surprise this year was Bárbara Domingos who nearly qualified for the individual all-around final at the World Championships and could realistically become the first individual to qualify through her own merits for the Olympics.

I'm very outspoken about how I feel about the Winter Olympics, so honestly I don't care about any specific sport for inclusion. However, if they can add ski jumping (the most absurd sport in the world, in my opinion, even more so than things like kinball or canoe polo), they can add anything, really.

I believe there's a separate federation for Eisstock/Ice stock sport. Fun fact: Brazil won a silver medal at the 2014 Eisstock World Championships, and has been campaigning for the sport to join the Winter Olympics ever since. The Brazilian Volleyball Confederation also admitted snow volleyball as a discipline, and a Brazilian team won a medal at the 2018 World Cup circuit.

And ice hockey too. Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia and Mexico sent teams to the Pan American Ice Hockey Tournament when it existed. The US and Jamaica are also members of IIHF, so we can have 8 teams in the tournament pretty much like any team sport at the (Summer) Pan American Games.